We were destined to meet like a team of superheroes and this is our origin story.

— Abed

In the study room, the study group is preparing for the history final. Pierce is not in attendance as he is donating his kidney to his half-brother Gilbert Lawson. Abed distracts everyone when he reveals he is studying the group's personal histories attempting to prove that they were destined to meet. Meanwhile outside the study room, Chang is talking on his cellphone with Dean Spreck from City College. Chang assures him his plan to destroy the study group is underway. At the same time, Abed shows the group a chart he had been working on entitled "The Crazy Quilt of Destiny". He uses it to describe the events which occurred in 2008 starting with Troy and Annie both attending Riverside High. Abed then reveals that on Thanksgiving he discovered a receipt at Shirley's house. The date on the receipt placed her at the Greendale Mall on the same day he was.

Abed shows off the "Crazy Quilt of Destiny" chart.

Over in the administrations office, Dean Pelton was guilted by Chang into letting him mail an important document; Greendale's lease renewal for the land the college sublets from the Arapaho Nation. Back in Group Study Room F, Abed mentions an earlier meeting Britta and Jeff. He was still working at his law firm and had just won an important Civil Liberties case involving a stripper named Mysti. Britta and her group the "Anherchists" congratulated him for the win and a photo was taken of the two fist bumping. After Britta proposed that her group next tackle protesting an animal test lab, a member says they're tired of being activists and they quit. Shirley interrupts Abed's recollection of events to reveal another connection; from the photo she recognized the stripper Jeff defended as the one Andre cheated on her with.

Britta and Jeff's first meeting was way before Greendale.

Jeff is apologetic over his past actions but states the case didn't turn out well for him since his success put scrutiny on his legal credentials and led to his eventual termination. Shirley is still furious when Troy decides to interject. He recalls his own bad history with Annie who he claimed ruined High School for him. They both attended a party where High School honors were being awarded by a classmate. After sweeping the awards, including one for "Most likely to succeed", Annie (who at the time was hopped up on Adderall) stopped the ceremony and berated Troy calling him a "mindless robot". When Troy innocently asked her if she went to his school, Annie took this as an insult and ran screaming through a patio glass door. Later, her words and actions affected him so much he faked an injury that night when he did a keg flip.

You are just a mindless ROBOT!!!

I'm sorry... Do you go to my school?

Annie is irritated that Troy would compare his fake injury to her real one which resulted in six different reconstructive surgeries for her. Shirley pleads with them to stop dredging up painful memories and reminding them of what could have been. When she mention having to pick up her kids at the mall, Abed catches another connection. He had been at the mall that day warning people not to watch "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace". He realizes he met Shirley's kids and accosted them about the seeing the movie. This caused her to leave Andre alone at a restaurant where he subsequently ran into Mysti. After getting a restraining order put on him by the theater manager his father took him to a therapist's office. While he was there, he alerted the doctor to Annie who had just stolen a prescription pad. When she exited the office she encountered Britta who had freed a monkey from the animal testing lab next door.

Abed makes shocking discoveries in the group's history.

Back in real time, Abed declares himself to be the villain in the group's origin story since his actions resulted in negative consequences for each of them. Jeff disagrees since it was mostly accidental. In Jeff's case he intentionally caused Shirley's past misery by encouraging Mysti to hit on Andre. Unable to process the startling revelations, the study session is brought to an immediate end and everyone goes their separate ways. Much later, Abed finds himself at the Greendale Mall alone at a table at "Yogurtsburgh". He is then joined by Jeff who is surprised to see him. When Abed starts to apologize for his past actions Jeff reassures him he wasn't to blame. It's then that the rest of the study group arrives causing everyone to question the weird coincidence which brought everyone to the same place. Troy then mentions the yogurt shop as being the place where he decided to enrol at Greendale four years ago.

Coincidental meeting or destiny?

When the others eerily respond they too decided to attend the school at the very same shop, Abed tries to piece together the connections. He flashes back to that specific day in question and the details involving each group members decision emerge. Ben Chang and Dean Pelton had gone to the mall that day to hand out flyers for Greendale. Pelton had a brief run in with an upset Shirley who was on her way to Yogurtsburgh and became fascinated with lingerie she discarded which she had bought for Andre. Meanwhile, Chang was already in the yogurt shop and handed out flyers to Troy (who was there with his high school buddies), Abed (who was there with his father) and Annie (who was there with her rehab group). As he continued to hand out flyers, Chang ran into Britta who was at the counter filling out a job application for the shop.

"This better not awaken anything in me."

He mentioned to her how easy it was to get a degree at Greendale and this intrigued not only her but Jeff who happened to be standing behind her waiting in line. He remembered his old client Ian Duncan taught at the school which he thought might make getting a replacement degree easier. As the future study group members considered attending the school they were all briefly distracted. An old man broke the yogurt machine and then faked a heart attack to cover his mistake. Back in the present, Jeff remarks that no matter how bad some of the events were that brought them here he wouldn't trade what occurred for anything since it brought them all to this point. Although Shirley hints that a higher power was at work, Abed comes to a different conclusion.

Pierce?

He excuses himself and goes back to Greendale to find the one person who had been the uniting factor in the study group's origin: Ben Chang. He finds him inside the study room having just exited the air vents. Abed informs him that he was always an honorary member of the group and was instrumental in their origins. Abed invites him to join them for frozen yogurt but "Kevin" is reluctant feeling that it's too late. Abed replies that everyone deserves a second chance and pointedly calls him "Chang" instead of "Kevin". Chang assumes he has been found out but Abed feigns ignorance and again extends his invitation. Chang hesitates for a second considering whatever it was he did in the air vents. He then happily agrees to join the group but asks that they stop by the post office as he needs to mail something back to Dean Pelton.

Chang calls Dean Spreck and tells him he's pulling out, before joining the rest of the study group for fro-yo. Meanwhile, in Dean Spreck's office, he looks on at a blueprint for his "Plan B", while laughing manically.

Britta denies to Abed that she did internet foot modelling although Troy is quick to correct her with a photo on his cellphone and she herself told Jeff back in the Season One episode Pilot that she did this.

Chang mentions that the day is "the anniversary of his empire's destruction" referring to the Season Three episode "First Chang Dynasty" when the study group infiltrated his regime at the school and succeeded in liberating Greendale from his rule.

The person Shirley shoved through a jukebox which was mentioned in the Season One episode Pilot, was revealed to be Mysti the stripper her husband Andre Bennett left her for.

In the episode "For A Few Paintballs More", Pierce says that he had been a student at Greendale for twelve years, and never held on to a group of friends for more than a semester, which supports Abed's note about him: "Fixture at Greendale. Unavoidable."

History lesson: Many things that have happened in the series, and even the joining of the group, have been shown to have been caused by the happenings of the study group:

It is revealed that two balloons popping after Annie crashed through a glass door gave Magnitude the idea for his catchphrase.

Britta first met Annie's Boobs when she liberated the monkey from a medical testing lab. She suggests that if the monkey bit someone it could amuse them to become psychotic. This is perhaps meant to explains Chang's increasingly bizarre actions after encountering Annie's Boobs in the air vents("Paradigms of Human Memory").

It's shown that after Shirley discarded her lingerie in the mall, Dean Pelton picked it up and said "This better not awaken anything in me" . This is exactly what he would say in the Season One episode "Environmental Science" after viewing a Dalmatian video online.

Annie freaking out about not winning the most likely to succeed award is similar to Jeff freaking out about not winning the most handsome young man award in "Contemporary Impressionists".

As noted in the "Previously" section, the study group remembers seeing an old man (presumably Pierce), struggling to turn off a yogurt machine similar to an end tag from Season Three.

In Season One episode "Introduction to Statistics" Shirley described the woman Andre had left her as a "Long neck, weave wearing bank teller". In a later episode from the same season "Beginner Pottery", her occupation would be retconned as a stripper. In this episode her appearance does not match the description Shirley gave.

In Season One episode "Romantic Expressionism", Troy mentions that Annie had a nervous breakdown and ran through a glass door screaming "Everyone is a Robot!". In the flashback she does have the nervous breakdown and runs through a glass door, but didn't scream "Everyone is a robot!" She does, however, say Troy is a robot in reference to his former jock-like attitude.

In the Season One episode "Pilot", Annie stated that Troy injured himself in a keg stand dislocating both shoulders in the process. Troy only corrects her by saying it was a keg flip. In this episode, Troy is shown doing the keg flip but injures his knee instead. Community writer and executive producer Andy Bobrow acknowledged the mistake on his Twitter account. Also, in the Season One episode "Football, Feminism and You", Troy mentions that he injured himself on purpose that night. In this episode, however, his injury turns out to be fake to begin with.

In previous episodes (such as "Accounting for Lawyers") it has been mentioned that Annie was overweight and had skin problems during her high school years and up to her stint in rehab after dropping out. In this episode, flashbacks show her with a bad hairdo, braces and glasses, but no zits or excessive weight.

Shirley mentions that Pierce was disappointed that when he donated his kidney to his half brother Gilbert it didn't involve sleeping with a Russian woman then waking up in a bathtub filled with ice. This is a reference to a particular Urban legend where such a thing was said to have occurred to an unsuspecting vacationer.

Abed was going to call his chart the "Loom of Fate" a reference to the 2009 comic book movie "Wanted" where such a device was used.

In a flashback to 2008, Troy is seen in High School quoting the film "There Will Be Blood"'s infamous line "I drink your milkshake".

Troy says "we are all Spider Man" after Abed mentions Uncle Ben; this is another reference to the campaign for Donald Glover to be Spider Man.

Well read: The comic book hero Spider Man is referenced by Abed when he mentions his origin involving Uncle Ben. In addition, Dean Spreck's "Plan B" is a blueprint of what looks like a giant Spiderbot, which is a reference to the Spider-Slayers from Spider-Man: The Animated Series.